Hi Alivia,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 3: I’m actively figuring out what my interests are by trying one or more of them out in some way .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were achievement, benevolence, and self-direction.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was openness.
You said your top three talents were social, artistic / spatial, and verbal.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a pretty good idea about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to excel in school .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Read the news .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said I will feel proud of myself .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said I have no time .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I wake up in the morning, then I will read the morning brew newsletter .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in Running .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt Offended when receiving critical feedback, and Offended when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling a lot of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being academics .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Sports .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Manager .
In one word, you said it made you feel Warm .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
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| Success is a journey, and happiness comes from the pursuit of goals |
| Exploring interests are crucial, don't focus too much on developing them when you aren't certain of what they are yet |
| Try to align things like your career to your personality traits, even though they change, they're important |
| Goal hierarchies are crucial in achieving a higher level goal to prioritize your life…. Goals should reflect your interests and values |
| It's important to take the time to plan ahead through WOOP and implementation intentions as it makes your likelihood of achieving the goal much higher |
| Deliberate practice will not be enjoyable, but the reward is invaluable |
| Ego gets in the way of processing feedback, so find ways to mediate that |
| Stress is an important human response to adversity, but it is the way you deal with it that matters |
| Habits are created through situation change, not willpower |
| Leaning on other people isn't a weakness; it's a way to build grit |
| One way of being a giver is to conduct a five minute favor habit |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
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| Ishaan Lal |
| :) |
| :) |
| Sitting adjacent to Alivia for the first half of Grit Lab was the exact experience I needed to enjoy this class to the highest degree. The one thing that I respect most about Alivia is her honesty. In all exercises, whether that be our opening discussions or during pair-and-shares, Alivia was always completely honest and never afraid to share her thoughts. In a class that has a main focus of learning about yourself and other people, this was beyond appreciated, as it allowed me to candidly understand others’ points of view. Alivia always came to class with just the right amount of pep and energy to get our group on the right footing to have a successful class. She always did her best to guide our discussions and ask us meaningful questions, which really let our group connect and better understand each other.
Alivia had a really unique Discovery Project. The history of sneakers is a super niche topic, but it made for a really fun presentation. It was evident that Alivia was really passionate about this topic; this was well indicated by her willingness to reach out to people to learn more about the field. For example, she voluntarily sat on Locust to interview people about their sneakers. She met with a friend who was experienced with selling sneakers and developed a relationship with them where they would check in with each other about sneaker releases. Alivia mentioned during her presentation the importance of staying on top of new sneaker releases – which is something I had never really thought about before. My favorite thing about Alivia’s discovery project was how the topic she chose was an amalgamation of many facets of herself. Her history of working in retail and high ranking of conscientiousness & open-mindedness made this topic a really good fit for herself. And this was well represented by her presentation.
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| Albena Ruseva |
| Alivia always shared something in our group discussions that made me laugh. She came in with a positive attitude and a smile and was so refreshing to be around. Alivia's sense of humor brought an incredible lightness to the dynamics of our group. Moreover, her positive demeanor made the entire GritLab experience more enjoyable.
What an interesting topic Alivia chose! I had no idea there was so much going on behind the scenes of the sneaker world. Alivia provided a really nice introduction into how she became interested in this project which was quite intriguing. I further appreciated how she created a presentation that was both informative and engaging. If I knew she was on Locust that day, I would have worn my favorite sneakers! Her passion and interest for the subject were evident and I don’t think I’ll look at sneakers the same way anymore. |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.